STD does the STDs (That’s Save The Date)

So,

I’m back from a brief sojourn to Devon to see the parents. I was packed onto the train with all the paraphernalia and instructions needed to get Save the Dates out to various guests. Apparently playing Angry Birds for 3 hours wasn’t a productive use of my time. I think you’ll find that 3 stars across the board is a very productive use of time, but Sharon didn’t quite accept that my desire to go “all the way” with a set of ornithological kamikaze pilots was a good example of my commitment.

Whatever.

Getting to the stage where we can even send them out has been a bit of a pain. Save the Dates seem to be a very new and American addition to the wedding repertoire. As such I was unsure whether it was good form to be sending them or not – would people be expecting them, would they be confused? It was, and to some extent, still is confusing.

The next thing to think about is the medium itself

Video

There have been some notable successes in this medium

However for the most part this relies on the majority of your recipients being used to computers, YouTube and up for things not very traditional. So not my Nan then. It also requires you to be able to produce the thing in the first place – which means you need a good portion of creativity and disposable cash in some ratio or another. The last camcorder I used was bought in 1984 and made me look like I was an ITV broadcaster, and while I do have some creative juices flowing around my amble body, I am not sure they extend to cinematography.

Email

Pros – if you are a dab hand with some kind of desktop publishing / graphic creation then you can create yourself a nice image to send out en-masse to all your recipients

Cons – can be a little impersonal and if you don’t feel comfortable creating the email you may be stuck with just a few lines of text, which serves the purpose but won’t earn you any Brownie points for being the technical one in the house…

Card

Professional - there are loads of suppliers out there (have you checked out the Staggered suppliers map – well go on. Now. Go) with a good proportion specialising in stationery. Many cater for Save the Dates, and there are lots of designs to choose from. The problem as ever with Wedding stationery is that it’s bloody expensive, especially considering what it is – a piece of paper. Sharon’s received some great invitations in the past, but says she feels too guilty to throw them away as they have obviously cost so much. I don’t want anyone to feel guilty about a ruddy card – especially not a frivolous one send to all your potential invitees.

DIY – This is becoming more and more popular while times are tough. The good thing about them is that they can be done relatively easily, cheaply and if you are not sure about having enough creative flair then there are ready-made packs in craft stores. It also allows you to use more adventurous or quirky mediums to send the message, like post cards, simple envelope-letters or sending origami instructions with the paper.

In the end we went for DIY using my current top tip for Save the Dates: Piggyback. Now normally I don’t send out Christmas cards as I feel it’s better to use mediums which don’t have such an environmental impact, but Sharon is a stickler for sending them. So I decided to embrace this and used the postage to do two things at once.

We picked a set of cards that roughly matched the colours we are taking about for the wedding. Inside we wrote the normal seasons greeting. The genius part that Sharon came up with was to then take left-over (yet smart) present tags and write our brief Save the Date message on them. We then attached these to the inside cover of the card (easy way is sellotape but you can also do what we did which was to make a small hole near the top with a hole punch and tie the tag in. If you are going to do this then it will work better with the right kind of card design).

So, my summary is this – there are options for all and there are a lot that won’t break your bank or your principles if you are that way inclined. It also gives you a platform to add buckets of your personality to the stationery before it all gets driven down the path of pantone colours and lace edging…

Wishing you all a happy 2011 – Year of the Groom,

STD

Image courtesy of Flickr

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